The Pursuit of European Strategic Autonomy : Balancing or Hedging Foreign Policy Behaviour in Relation to Russia?

Abstract: Following the publication of the European Union Global Strategy in 2016 where the EU officially announced its quest for European Strategic Autonomy (ESA), a policy initiative toenable EU’s capacity to act autonomously in the realm of security and defence, this study poses the following research question: What type of foreign policy behaviour does the EU exhibit in security and defence through its quest for strategic autonomy? Broadly based in realism, the study is designed as a single case-study of EU foreign policy behaviour in relation to Russia and analyses whether the pursuit of ESA entails a balancing or hedging EU foreign policy behaviour. By doing so, the study contributes theoretically, by disentangling and operationalising these two concepts analytically, and empirically, by applying them to an EU context and investigating their presence. The results show that the EU does not exhibit a hedging behaviour towards Russia, and whether the EU exhibits a balancing behaviour remains inconclusive as the empirical material provided insufficient evidence to conclude so.